The Art of the Frame

By Glenn Campbell

An essential problem of art is where your work should begin and end. If you are taking a photo, what should you include in the frame and what should you leave out? If you are editing a movie scene, how long should it be? If you are writing a piece of music, how long should each passage be and how many times should it be repeated? If you are writing a book or essay, at what point have made your point and are now beating it to death?

Many works fail not because the raw material is inadequate but because it is framed wrong. We all have all set through movies that have some good parts but just goes on and on and on. The good parts are eventually drowned out by the rest of the movie and we walk away exhausted. The artist might be including too much or too little in the frame or perhaps he is ignorant of framing altogether. You could say that framing is half the job of art. It is not just what you produce but how you edit and present what you produce.

I could probably write a whole book on the subject of framing, but the core idea is pretty simple: Every work needs a human focus, a single point of reference within it that he automatically identifies with. Once you know what that human focus is, framing will be dictated by it.

To illustrate this concept, I will use photography, but similar analogies apply to almost any art.

Grand Canyon Landscape

Imagine the Grand Canyon. You have seen countless photos of it. If you go there, you are probably going to take your own photo, but it will be probably be no different than the thousand you can pull up on the internet right now. A photo that shows only the Grand Canyon is almost meaningless, because you have no perspective. You can't even tell how big it is! If you have an expensive camera and some fancy editing software, you can probably make it look dramatic, but even then the viewer's eyes glaze over very quickly. Beautiful but boring!

Now imagine a photo of the Grand Canyon with a single person in it. He or she is a tiny figure in the lower corner of the frame, looking out on the vastness of the canyon. Suddenly, the Grand Canyon means something! The tiny person is someone the viewer can identify with. The viewers is thinking, "That could be me!" Now the canyon is not just mindless erosion anymore. We can now measure it, get lost in it, be frightened of it, be in awe of it.. The simple addition of a tiny figure makes us capable of processing it.

Here is a simple rule for better photos: No matter what you are taking a photo of, make sure there is a human or human-like presence in it. Furthermore, there should be only one human focus, even if you are taking a photo of a crowd. The viewer's attention should be drawn to one specific part of the photo, and the whole rest of the photo is judged by that reference point.

The human reference does not always have to be an actual human. It can be an animal that looks human, like a dog or cat, or it can be an animal that humans hate like a spider. It can be a lone tree on a cliff, because that has a human feel to it. It can be something that implies a human presence like a tiny cabin in the woods. There are all sorts of things that can serve as stand-ins for humans—a car, a sign a cactus, an empty road—but the human center always has to be there. You can call anything "art", but I contend you don't have memorable and emotionally compelling art without a human in the picture.

Once you have a single human in your Grand Canyon photo, how do you know where to crop it? In this case it is pretty easy: You want to show as much of the canyon as you can while still allowing the viewer to quickly identify the human figure. (The photo above is a little weak because the humans are the same color as the background.) Obviously, if you show too much canyon and too small a figure, viewers are not going to see the figure. If you show too little canyon, then you've wasted all that canyon. The message of a photo like this is, "Look how big it is!" so you want to show as much of that bigness as you can while still preserving the human reference point.

Your cropping will also be dictated by practical real-world considerations, like the size of the final print. If you are preparing a wall-size mural, you are going to crop the photo differently than if you are displaying the photo on Facebook. With more attention space at your disposal, you are probably going to make the human figure smaller, just to maximize the apparent size of the canyon.

You are also constrained by your raw materials. You can't crop the photo any wider than the photo you originally took, and not all of the frame may be usable. Maybe there is a distraction on one side of the original frame that you would like to keep out—like some tourist picking his nose. You are going to crop him out, even though you would have liked more canyon.

Real world photography (and all art) is filled with these practical constraints—working with what you've got and keeping distractions out of the frame. Thanks to the magic of editing, the viewer is never going to know about that tourist picking his nose. You may have lost some of your spacious canyon but you probably haven't lost much in overall impact.

Why do you want your human subject in the lower corner of the photo rather than the center. Simple: You want the biggest canyon possible within the constraints of your frame. A reference point in the center sometimes works, but in this case you would be splitting the canyon into two smaller areas and it might not feel as big.

Grand Canyon Portrait

Aside from shooting the Grand Canyon without reference points, what other framing mistakes to tourists make? Here's one thing you see all the time: They take pictures of each other in front of the canyon, with the canyon in the background and themselves in the middle foreground where we can see them almost from head to toe. We can hardly make out their faces, but they are apparently smiling and obviously saying to the folks back home, "Ha, we made it to the Grand Canyon and you didn't!" (BTW: None of these Grand Canyon photos are mine. All swiped from the web.)

What is wrong with this picture? It is the same bland photo every tourist takes at every tourist attraction. While there is certainly a human reference point in the photo—the tourist being photographed—it is not being used to the best effect.

There are two ways you can use a human subject. The subject can give perspective to the background, as in our Grand Canyon landscape photo, or the background can be used to give perspective to the subject. Let's be honest, that shot of you at the canyon isn't about the canyon; it's about you, so let's frame it that way. Bring the camera to within two feet of the subject, the same way you would shoot a a close-up portrait with no canyon out there. The Grand Canyon will appear blurred in the background and will be almost unidentifiable.

"Almost" unidentifiable is the key. You going to frame it in such as way that just enough of the Grand Canyon appears in the background that it is identifiable and authentic. The intended effect is to understate your presence at the Grand Canyon, which paradoxically heightens its value. You are no longer a rube tourist from Iowa. You are a seasoned world traveler who just happened to be at the Grand Canyon when this portrait was taken. See the difference?

You see this in fashion photography: models cavorting at base the Eiffel Tower where you don't actually see the whole tower, maybe only a bit of the base, just enough to reveal subtly to the viewer where we are. The message is that we just happen to be in Paris. It's no big thing. The more you understate a visual asset like this, the more you imply to the viewer a whole big world beyond the frame—much bigger than reality!

Framing in Film

There are similar analogies in film (apart from the obvious ones of deciding how to photographically frame the shot). For example: When something disastrous happens or an evil character does something outrageous, you have to have a sympathetic human in the scene to give that action perspective. There is no point in Darth Vader using the Death Star to destroy Alderaan if Princess Leia isn't present to witness it. Leia is our human reference point. We are going to see what she sees, and the scene will end when the emotional impact has been made on her, not us.

In film, things shouldn't just happen, with an omniscient camera recording them. Most significant actions need to be witnessed by somebody. The audience is sees the story through that person's eyes (even if that "person" is R2D2). The scene is presented from their perspective, even if it isn't shot from their literal point of view. That is the reason Darth Vader has sympathetic human commanders under him. Even though they are his henchmen, we see the horror of what he does through their eyes. A crew of mindless droids would not serve the same purpose.

Natural Boundaries

In photography, here is another framing issue: Every original scene has natural boundaries where it can be most easily be cropped. Even if you are shooting a random forest, there are always gaps in the trees where it feels right to crop. Once you decide the general boundaries dictated by character focus, you can look for natural places in the frame you will make the actual incision.

For example, note the golden frame in the main illustration at the top of this blog entry. (This is my own photo taken yesterday in Puerto Rico. Album) Notice that I placed the frame just above the palm trees, so there was a little bit of blue sky above them. In general, you want to crop out any useless empty space, like too much blue sky above the palm trees. When you have useful information available, you keep it. When you run out of information, you crop it out. (You can see how I actually cropped the photo here.)

However, sometimes you do NOT want to crop at natural boundaries. Sometimes you want the opposite: you want details to bleed off the edge of the frame. This takes advantage of a powerful human illusion: Whatever you see bleeding off the edge of the frame is assumed to continue indefinitely. Look at the still of Princess Leia above. Notice the simple fact that the background continues off the frame. This leads the viewer to believe there is a whole Imperial Star Cruiser beyond the frame. In fact, the set may end six inches beyond the camera's view, but because we don't see it end we assume it goes on forever.

If you are shooting the Grand Canyon, you want to give the impression that it goes on forever, so you let it bleed off the edges of the frame. This also how a filmmaker can make a group of 20 extras seem like a mob of 10,000. They cut people off at the edges so you have only half a person on either side. This is not the natural way to crop, but it is the way you do it to imply infinity.

This is one of the ways photos can lie. They imply an infinity beyond the frame which may not be real. Even reputable photojournalists will show you a close up of 10 protesters, making you think there are 1000. I am unashamed about using this illusion myself. What I do is art, not journalism. While I rarely use Photoshop to change details, the impression created by a photo almost never matches the original reality. That's just the way art works. You can't let reality get in the way.

The framing concepts of photography also apply in analogous ways to other arts like writing, music and public speaking. You have to have an emotional focus—some person you are playing to. You're not just stringing words or notes together because they sound good. You working within an emotional frame of reference that was established by sticking a human in there someplace.

Only humans have meaning. Without them, all you have is erosion.

How to Become a Great Artist

By Glenn Campbell in Istanbul

How do you become a great artist? This is a frequent preoccupation of young people who feel they are destined for great things but don't know how to go about it. Almost everything you hope to accomplish is an "art". Whether you hope to become a great filmmaker, writer or painter or you just want to make a lot of money in business, there are certain finely tuned skills you need to acquire. How do you go about obtaining them?

To become skilled in his chosen art, the budding artist usually attempts some logical seeming actions:

1. They buy all the proper supplies and equipment for the art. For example, if you hope to become a great photographer, you first invest in a lot of expensive camera equipment.
2. They enroll in a course. To become a great photographer, you sign up for a photography class at the local community college.
3. They seek a patron. You try to find someone with money or connections who will recognize your raw talent and either support you while you are learning or give you the "big break" you need to get attention.
4. They try to find an environment of like minded people who are also seeking the same skills, who will critique each other and give emotional support to each other on their path to greatness.

These steps seem like they will turn you into a great artist, but in practice they don't work! Why not? Because they tend to distract you from the core requirement of becoming an artist, which is PRACTICING YOUR ART! You have to go out and DO IT, regardless of your equipment or social environment. This is the only way to refine your skills. If you aren't willing to "do" your art—on your own, with the equipment you have, without anyone directing you or giving you praise or guidance—then you aren't going to become a great artist.

To become a great photographer, you need to get out into the real world and start taking photos, right now, with whatever camera you have. You cannot wait for better equipment. You cannot wait for a course to teach you what to do, or a patron or a support group. You have to do it NOW with whatever resources you have or you aren't seriously committed to your art. This is true no matter what your chosen medium may be: You have to do it to get better at it.

There is nothing wrong with having good equipment, but if you find yourself waiting for better equipment before you start your career, then you have fallen into a trap. People like to say, "I'll start taking better photos when I have a better camera," which usually turns into a big fat excuse for never doing it at all. Almost everyone in the modern world has a cellphone camera or equivalent—use that! If your pictures look like crap, it's not the camera's fault; it's your fault for not recognizing the constraints of your medium and tailoring you compositions accordingly. If your cellphone photos are crap, it is pretty much guaranteed your pictures from a $1000 camera will be crap too, because you haven't learned the meta-skill of constantly improving yourself within the resources you currently have.

Every medium and piece of equipment has its constraints and limitations. That is the nature of art: Art is the distillation of the complexities of the world onto a restricted medium. Every great artwork is essentially a cartoon, taking complex ideas and expressing them in a few strokes on a constrained canvas. It is the artist's responsibility to understand the parameters and characteristics of his canvas and adjusting his output accordingly.

It is also tempting to wait for a teacher to tell you what to do. Education will take you through a programmed series of steps over an extended period of time, progressively teaching you the technical skills of your chosen art. The only question is whether this is a better learning method than just taking pictures, looking at the results, adjusting your composition and experimenting with all dials and settings on your camera. In the huge amount of time you spend sitting in class, mostly going through material you are already know, you can usually make a lot more progress on your own. Anything in a textbook is something you can probably pick up on the internet when you are ready to absorb it. The main trouble with classes is they go at the instructor's pace, not yours.

An essential meta-skill of the great artist is to be able to look at his own work, judge it dispassionately, then use that knowledge to improve his own work in the future. No class can teach you this skill, and practice alone won't get you very far unless you have it. "Practice makes perfect," is a false assumption if you don't stop occasionally, look dispassionately at your product and adjust your methods accordingly. Many people practice all their lives at their chosen art and never get better, because they never stop to observe their own work. Once you have the meta-skill of dispassionate self-observation, then all you really need to gain practical skills is to do your art—a lot! New techniques will come to your through experimentation and observation, and over time you will build up an ever growing toolbox of them.

Finding a patron sounds nice, but there aren't many of them around and the competition for access to them is usually intense. If you hope to be a great filmmaker, it would be nice to have a major studio fund your movie idea, but that is about as likely as winning the lottery. In the meantime, if your art really matters to you, you forge ahead. If nothing else, your can make movies with your own video camera, which is far better than anything the earliest filmmakers had. If you can't make one compelling YouTube video after another, without a budget, then frankly you're not a great filmmaker and don't deserve patrons.

The trouble with looking for patrons is the sales effort can end up soaking up all your time and standing in the way of actually practicing your art. There is usually a waiting game involved, and while you are waiting, you are not creating. You also face the frustration of dealing with patrons who are usually clueless about your art. They are businessmen, not artists, and they are usually looking backwards not forward. They are always looking back at the last big thing and trying to reproduce it. They don't have the courage or vision to see the next big thing. Only you can grasp where your art is headed, so you will probably have to prove it without them.

An alternative to trying to find sponsors willing support you on faith is to become damn good at what you do, in fact, and prove it with every artwork. If you paint fantastic pictures, ones that  blow the socks off anyone who looks at them, then sponsorship is less and less important, because the work sells itself. You may have to accept that you have to get to this point on your own, without any outside support. To support yourself while you gain blow-your-socks-off skills, you may have to paint signs or houses for a living. You'll have to be creative about finding things that make money in the real world while allowing you to pursue your chosen art.

Look at that quintessential creative dude, Leonardo da Vinci. Now there's a guy who had a passion for his work regardless of his economic opportunities. He had a few paying gigs—painting Madonnas and portraits of rich people—but you sense that those were just the things he did to pay the rent. Underneath was a real passion to understand and fully exploit every medium he was working in regardless of whether there was a patron willing to support that project. Today, he is known for a multitude of ideas and skills, only a few of which he was ever paid for. That's the way you operate if you truly care about your art. You plow ahead, doing what you need to do to stay alive but not limiting yourself to the narrow needs of your sponsors.

Finally, the young artist is often tempted to join some form of support group. Some aspiring writers in the same city might form a creative writing group where each reads his work aloud and the others critique it. That's another nice-sounding idea that doesn't work in the real world. Soon you are spending most of your time maintaining the organization and less time on actual creation. The quality of the feedback you are getting is also suspect. Each of your critics has his own work to promote, and this bias is going to color his view of yours. Is this useful feedback, or are people just patting each other on the back, telling each other what they want to hear?

People join creative groups because they are lonely, because they want someone to hold their hand on the journey. Unfortunately, creativity is an inherently lonely undertaking. You have to be self-contained and self-motivated if you expect to become great in what you do. It is safe to say that history's greatest writers did not become great by joining writers' groups. Quite the opposite: They tended to lock themselves off from society so they could get things done according to their own muse.

Feedback is certainly helpful when it happens and you can't afford to ignore it, but it has to be honest and unbiased feedback, not a pat on the back from a friend. The fact is, good feedback is very rare in the real world until your final work is released and it is too late. Instead, you have to rely primarily on your meta-skill of self-feedback, looking calmly at your own work and seeing it as it really is.

Becoming great in any art form is a matter of building up a toolbox of both meta- and practical skills. This can only happen by intense, direct, personal experience, coupled with the willingness to look objectively at your own work and modify your techniques accordingly. To modify your techniques, you can't get too invested in the old ones. If you have been painting pictures a certain way for ten years and unexpectedly discover a new technique that is better, you have to be willing to turn on a dime and pick up that new technique, even if it devalues the stuff you have already done.

A committed artist usually looks back on his own past not with reverence but embarrassment. He says, "My god, I can't believe how primitive my work was back then!" Others may not share this sentiment, but it is essential for the artist to continually move on. As he builds his toolbox, old techniques become archaic. Meanwhile, his work gets easier and easier as he spits out more great work with fewer and fewer strokes.

If you are a great artist spewing out great work, day after day, year after year, sooner or later someone will notice. If you are a Leonardo, the market may never fully understand you until you are long dead, but at least you'll sell a few stunning Madonnas here and there.

The old-fashioned way of becoming a great artist is to consistently produce great work. There is no shortcut to getting there. You have to take the time to practice your art and build your toolbox.


For related essays on creativity, see my Virtual Film Studio.

Art and the Sensory Sphere

As a prolific photographer, I have had plenty of time to contemplate what makes a good photo. It isn't the subject matter but your selection of the subject matter.

If you put me in the middle of, say, a kindergarten classroom and give me permission to take photos, I guarantee that I will come up with 100s of great shots in an hour or less -- provided I have a zoom lens and an opportunity to crop and edit those photos later. Furthermore, I don't have to move from my location in the center of the room to find these compelling images. They are all around me; I just have to select them.

I call the input all around me the "sensory sphere". It is a little like lying on the ground at night looking up at the stars. In theory, there are a million stories up there; you just have to have a powerful enough telescope to see them. If you are in a crowded room, there are also a million stories. You just have to focus on the right places.

To be a great artist, you don't have to go out and seek stories. They are already all around you; you just have to select them from the environment. The real challenge isn't usually in the material available but in your own skills in recognizing and editing it. That's essentially what a photographer does: He edits the sensory environment around him. It's also what a writer or filmmaker does. If they are skilled enough, they can find a story anywhere. Only the unskilled need to travel the world or have huge production budgets.

Some environments are richer than other, but there is always good material in front of you. You can say, "I live in a boring town. There are no stories here," but that's not true. There are always stories right under your nose; you just have to have the wisdom to see them.